The Nelson Evening Mail MONDAY, MARCH 11, 1872.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VII, Issue 61, 11 March 1872, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail MONDAY, MARCH 11, 1872.

Considerable Indignation has been aroused both in this colony and in Australia by the intelligence that H.M.S. Rosario had shelled and destroyed a native village on the island where Bishop Patteson was killed in retaliation for his murder, from the manner in which the news was first published there being reason to believe that such really was the case. Now, however, it appears that although it was quite true that the ship had fired npon the natives, and that the details of the action, if such it can be called, are in every way correct, Captain Challis, who was in command, did not order the destruction of the village and the consequent loss ot life that it entailed by way of revenging the Bishop's death, but as a punishment to the natives for discharging a volley of arrows at his boats, by which one of the crew was killed and another wounded. This, of course, puts another and a more favorable coloring on the affair, but at the same time we very much question whether Captain Challis was justified in proceeding to such extremities upon so slight a provocation. Without taking a maudlin or too sentimental a view of the question it is but fair to the unhappy natives that we should remember the position in which they were placed. The labor traffic, as some call it, or slave trade as it should be designated if the proper name were applied to it, has been, and is beiDg, carried on to such an extent that it is no wonder that the inhabitants of these islands look with suspicion and even with the bitterest hatred upon every white man who visits their shores. But very few of us are aware to what an extent this traffic in human beiDgs has been carried, and we confess to having been much surprised in reading in the Otago Daily Tines of the 22nd February a series of private letters that have been received from a planter in the Fijis, who in the most cold-blooded manuer recounts his experiences in obtaining the labor necessary for his operations. Comment of ours is perfectly unnecessary, and we will leave this inhuman wretch to tell his own story. He has contrived to secure therequisite land, and the next thing is to proceed to Levuka "to buy some niggers." Having arrived there, " the first thing to be done was to see what niggers were for sale, and hearing that a cutter had come in from Tanna with 25 men, also the Wainui, from Solomon Islands, with 80, we started off to have a look at them. First, we boarded the Wainui, and had an inspection of all the men. I did not fancy them, as they were a lot of old men, and some very thin small boys, not an even lot at all. You could have drafted out about 40 good men, but this the captain objected to, so you had to take a cut of them just as they came. We next went on board the cutter to have a look at the Tanna men, and a fine lot of young fellows they were, with the exception of one man who had been very ill with the dysentery, and who was so weak that he could not stand. I would never have believed so thin a man could live. Now we went on shore to find the agent, and see how much he wauted for the niggers on board the cutter. £12, says be; so I told him to keep them till they got fat. He says, what will you give? Says I, £10; so after this style of thing for about two hours, we bought them for £10 each—he sticking out for gold on the beach; no truck with kites on Sydney. We also bought the dysentery nig. for a fiver, with the proviso that if the beggar died he was to give us a sound man on our next trip, on our paying another five pounds." We then learn that there had been some petty war in the group" of islands, in which King Cakobau proved victorious, and to punish those who had rebelled against his authority, he condemned his prisoners to work on the plantations for five years, charging for them at the rate of £6 per head. ■ Our English planter, who possibly prides himself on his superiority over the " niggerß " as a civilised Briton, goes on to inform

ug :— We immediately applied for forty. When we went to take delivery it was a curious sight ; about 2000 men, women, and children in one long, line on the beacb, guarded by Cakobau's soldiers. The first man that had applied got his number counted off— you had just to take them as they came. When our forty men were counted out we got a half-caste and marched them off to an empty house for the night, in which we locked them, put six Fiji men round the premises with loaded guns, so that if any of them tried to bolt they would be shot ; found them all safe in the morning, so chartered a cutter and put them all afloat, so that the beggars would have to swim about a mile if they jumped overboard." The next thing was to ship the slaves, and this was done in two small cutters of about ten tons each, and then the narrative continues : — "At daylight, or rather about 8 o'clock, we made a start — four cutters all bound for Taviuna with labor — got outside the reef and then it fell a dead calm ; no fun — hot as Billy-oh — 130 degrees in the hold with the Tanna men, so stick on deck ; a good deal of chaff between the four boats as to how they were getting on." During the night a breeze sprurjg up, and towards morning "it blew and no mistake." The horrible story then goes on as follows : — " My dysentry nigger was now an awful nuisance. I had to keep him behind me at the stern of the boat, for if I turned my head for a minute the other wretches threw lumps of firewood at him ; they wauted to kill him and throw him overboard. Poor devil, I pitied him, the sea breaking over the boat, be lying stark naked (the rest all the same), and dare not go into the hold for fear of being killed.'' Eventually the end of the journey was reached after eight days' knocking about, during which the weather is described as beiDg as " hot as blazes," and then we are siven a little insight into a slave's life on a Fijian plantation. "We had our first flogging the day before yesterday," say this extremely candid writer, I don't quite fancy it, but obedience must be insisted on to the letter. How it came about was this. All the Tanna men were sent out to pick cotton, but after they were out, two of them took it into their heads to go into the bush and look for wild yams ; so, at knocking off time, when all the men were called over, two were short, so we sat down and quietly waited until they made their appearance, when we made them kneel down at our feet, and with a thick stick gave them ten each down the back, something to remember for a time. You know these imported men that we have are cannibals of the very worst, class, and must be ruled with a rod of iron, or your life would not be safe. Of course, when you have got them fairly broken in to work, they will be no trouble, but they don't see why they should not do as they like." One more extract and we have done : — "By-the-bye, we have had some great doctoring here, with one Tanna man. One beggar died (£lO gone), and two or three more were bad, so we thought of a dose of ' painkiller,' with a good dose of chlorodyne, and then a rattling good shock of the galvanic battery. (No humbugging.) We pulled the thing out as far as we could, and then turned the handle as fast as possible. You should have seen the niggers twisting and screeching ; it has done them good though, the beggars are all at work again, with the exception of one. This fellow complains of his head. I am going to give him a good shock on the nut to-night ; this will waken him. Pretty rough doctoring this, you will say; but if you did not give it to them hot and strong, they would all take to their beds, and how would the work be done ? " While such revolting cruelties are being perpetrated in these seas by Europeans, surely the Rosario might have applied her shot and shell to a far more humane purpose than destroying native villages and killing the unfortunate inhabitants, because they, prompted by the instinct of self-preservation, discharged a volley of arrows on men whom they have been taught to look upon as their natural and most dreaded enemies. I, • -■